Re: Odd sort behaviour

On Tue, Sep 1, 2009 at 11:31 PM, Rob Sargent<robjsargent@gmail.com> wrote:
> How many ways might one accidentally do that I wonder.

Well most operating system distributions ask you when you install them
what region you're in and use a collation for that region.

In 8.4 you can check what collation a database is set to use with \l
in psql. In 8.3 the entire "cluster" has a single collation which you
can see using "show lc_collate".

You can see how your system's collations work by running sort:

$ LC_ALL=c sort s
a.ecke70@gmx.de
a.fischedick@t-online.de
adrianohazim@hotmail.com
adx008@show.org.tw
aecheniq@mac.com
aelefant@unina.it
aeo_tw@hotmail.com
aflores3432@gmail.com
afried@advancedneurosurgeons.com
agave007@comcast.net
agelsinger@amirsys.com
agis1doc@yahoo.gr

$ LC_ALL=en_US sort s
adrianohazim@hotmail.com
adx008@show.org.tw
aecheniq@mac.com
a.ecke70@gmx.de
aelefant@unina.it
aeo_tw@hotmail.com
a.fischedick@t-online.de
aflores3432@gmail.com
afried@advancedneurosurgeons.com
agave007@comcast.net
agelsinger@amirsys.com
agis1doc@yahoo.gr

-- 
greg
http://mit.edu/~gsstark/resume.pdf